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THE PATH OF GOLD 



BY , 

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CARRIE BLAKE MORGAN 



NEW WHATCOM, WASHINGTON 

EDSON & IRISH 
1900 



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51595 



Jj. Ibwwy of Goafffeam 
v vFS RECEIVED 

SEP 25 1900 

Copyright wtry 

/// tfpo 

SECOND COPY. 

0bliVih|-6d t# 

mm division, 

OCT 1 1900 









Copyright, 1900, 
By Carrie Bi,ake Morgan 



b.O.b 



0. 



ELLA HIGGINSON 



The Path of Gold 

An Indian legend, beautiful and old, 
Tells how a sinner sought the path of gold 

Cast by a midnight moon on waters deep, 
And there lay down to his eternal sleep, 

With faith that, though the sea his bones should hold, 
His deathless soul should mount the path of gold, 

And steal unchallenged through the gates of heaven, 
Its guilt forgotten, or, perchance, forgiven. 

low-hung moon ! quivering path of light ! 
The savage legend comes to me tonight. 

Beside the sea I stand, and at my feet 

The sands of earth and heaven's gold do meet. 

Would that I held the simple faith and hope 
That bore the Indian's soul up yon bright slope! 

But even as my prayer is cried aloud , 
Thy face, O moon, is hidden with a cloud; 

Thy light is gone; the waters, cold and gray, 
Clutch at my feet and chill all hope away. 

Oh, can it be that souls in sin grown old 
Can never find the shining Path of Gold ? 



No Man Hath Right 

No man hath right to rear a prison wall 

About himself, and then to sit therein 
And sigh for freedom, gone beyond recall, 

And make his moan for things that might have 
been. 

Nor hath he right to build himself a stair, 

By which to scale his prison's high rampart, 

When every stroke must mean some soul's despair, 
And every step a bleeding human heart. 



As Rosebads Will 

The dewdrop loved the rosebud, and the rosebud loved 

the dew, 
But the frost-king, hoary-headed, came between the 

lovers true ; 

Oh, a million jewels brought he, to entice the rosebud 

sweet, 
Ten hundred thousand diamonds, and cast them at her 

feet. 

The dew drop's tender opals paled before such kingly 

show, 
The rosebud chose the diamonds, as rosebuds will, you 

know. 

And now ? Oh, well, the sequel can be whispered in a 

breath — 
She had her hour of splendor, and she paid for it with 

death. 



A Voiceless Soul 

God makes no thing in vain. And yet — Ah, me ! 

If man should shape, from precious woods and fine, 

With skillful touch and art almost divine, 
A violin attuned to melody 
Of earth and sky, and restless, whispering sea, 

And then no bow create, — his work resign, 

And give the almost sentient thing no sign 
Nor sound to voice its inborn minstrelsy, — 

We quick should cry, "That man hath wrought in 
vain! " 
Soul of mine, thou must that viol be, 

Without a bow ! Thou canst not voice the strain 
That rends thy chords in effort to be free, 

And turns what should be joy to keenest pain. 
God makes no thing in vain. And yet — Ah, me ! 



Life's Song 

I would not live too long. Too many years 
Are just too many stanzas in life's song : 

However sweet the first, men's wearied ears 

Turn from the last. I would not live too long. 



A Memory 

A low-hung moon ; a path of silver flame 

Across a lonely stream ; a whispering wood ; 

A vigil drear for one who never came ; 
And all around God's peopled solitude. 



Sacred 

Deep in each artist's soul some picture lies 
That he will never paint for mortal eyes ; 

And every singer in his heart doth hold 
Some sad, sweet tale that he will leave untold. 



At Dead of Night 

I woke at dead of night. The wind was high; 

My white rose-bush was tapping 'gainst the pane 

With ghostly finger-tips ; a sobbing rain 
Made doleful rhythm for my thoughts, and I 
Strove vainly not to think, and wondered why 

My brain, ghoul-like, must dig where long had lain 

The pulseless dead that time and change had slain. 
I fear no living thing. But oh ! to lie, 

And see the gruesome dark within my room 
Take eyes and turn on me with yearning gaze ! 

To hear reproachful voices from the tomb 
Of duties unfulfilled, — might well-nigh craze 

A stronger brain ! God save me from the gloom 
Of sleepless hours that stretch between two days! 



IO 



As I Grow Old 

If need be, take my friends, my dole of wealth, 

Take faith, and love, and hope, take youth and health; 

But while I live, dear God, blight not the flower 

Of Reason in my brain ! Leave me the power 

To string together, on fine threads of gold, 

My fairest thoughts, as I grow gray and old. 



ii 



Come Not at Night 

O Death, come not for me at dead of night ! 
Call not my soul to take its lonely flight 

Through dark and storm unto the world unknown. 
But when the golden sun from out the sea 
Shall lift his face to light a path for me, 

Death, come then, and claim me for thine own. 



12 



Introspection 

Heart of mine, for shame ! to ache, and ache, 
Because a few things thou didst love are lost ! 
What if some treasures, yielded up, have cost 

Thee dear ? — Is that a sign that thou needst break ? 

Millions of hearts did ache ere thou didst feel 
One stab of pain ; for any heart can break ; 
But few can play the game of give and take, 

And come out whole from under life's hard heel. 

So heart, brace up, and twang thy quivering strings 
Into new strength. Ask no more tears of me; 
Nor beg of me to voice thy grief for thee. 

Poor heart, thou and thy kind are weakling things ! 



13 



A Thought 

God knows success is sweet. And yet He thought 
Not best to give the longed-for boon to all, 
Lest the desire to win it had been small, 

And His most wise design been set at naught. 

By contrast's law our estimates are made ; 

There were no beauty but for ugliness ; 

No grandeur but for littleness; and less 
Of joy in heaven's sunshine but for shade. 

So, friend, if you or I must work in vain, 
Remember that but for our fruitless toil 
Success had missed some portion of her foil. 

Let that thought blunt the stab of failure's pain. 



14 



Dead Flowers 

Send not vain tears to seek a by-gone hour 
No dew can kiss to life a last year's flower. 



Limitation 

river, beating 'gainst thy crags alway ! 

My kin thou art in boundless aspiration : 
Thou wouldst take mountain heights within thy sway, 
Yet canst not rise above thy banks of clay, — 

My kin again, in piteous limitation ! 



Poverty 



Possessing little maketh no man poor 
His poverty is in desiring more. 



15 



The Undertone of Pain 

Earth, thy carpet is so green to-day, 

1 would forget the graves it hides away ; 

I would not hear the sighs of grief and care 
That tremble in thy balmy, sunlit air. 

But Nature's touch upon the soul within 

Is as the master hand on violin ; 

And through thy music's softest, sweetest strain 

There throbs an endless undertone of pain. 



j6 



Discontent 

I could content myself to be one drop 

Among the myriad drops that swell the breast 
Of life's full sea, if I might ride the crest 

Of some proud wave that none can overtop ; 

If I might catch the sun's sweet morning light, 

When swift he mounts into the day's cool space, 
And paint his tinted clouds upon my face, 

And wear the stars upon my breast at night. 

But, oh, to lie a hundred fathoms deep, 
Down in a cold, dim cavern of the sea, 
Where no sun-ray can ever come to me, 

Where shadows dwell and sightless creatures creep ; 

To gaze forever up, with straining eyes, 

To where God's day illumes the shining sands, 
To grope, and strive, and reach with pallid hands, 

Yet never see the light, and never rise ! 

I should go mad, but for a still, small voice, 
A pitying voice, that sometimes says to me, 
1 'It takes so many drops to fill life's sea, 

Ye cannot all have places of your choice." 



17 



Growing Old 

To feel the failing power ; to sit and note 

The slipping cogs within the mental wheel ; 
To strive to hold a thought, and see it steal 

Away ; to watch each golden fancy float 

Beyond our reach. To be no longer bold, 

And sure, and free ; to falter and to grope ; 
Yet still to strive, and still to feebly hope — 

Until the struggle ends, and we are old. 



18 



"We Ne'er See Well" 

"I would not die unknown to fame," I said; 
"I feel, within, the power to do and be 
Something, if I were but unfettered, free 

To work in my own way, by fancy led. 

Why must I toil that others may be fed ? — 
Others who little reck the cost to me, 
For 'none so blind as they who will not see.' 

Dear heaven, if I were only free!" I plead. 

But when, one day, rcry hour of freedom came, 
I kissed the broken shackles I had lost, 
And knew my freedom gained at too great cost ; 

And now I neither strive nor long for fame ; 

For who can work, with none to help or care? 
And who would win what no dear one may share? 



19 



Jealousy 

I would thou wert a rose, and I the tree, 

That when I died, thou too might'st die with me. 

I would thou wert the earth, and I the sun, 

That if my light were quenched, thy race were run. 

I would thou wert a star, and I a cloud, 

That I, in death, might wind thee in my shroud. 

But, oh, to think that thou may'st live instead — 
May'st live and love again — when I am dead ! 



20 



Alas! 

The blind god is but snow-blind, after all, 

And gets his sight when Love's black night doth fall. 



Buried Gems 

Though I had drained the fount of knowledge dry, 
And heard all stories told by tongue or pen, 

I still should yearn to know the thoughts that lie 
Unvoiced, unwrit, in graves of nameless men. 



A Couplet 

A pair of lines — how often we have seen them ! — 
Like lovers fond, with but a thought between them. 



21 



The Skylark 

Oh, happy bird ! Though well I live and long, 
My throat must vainly strive to sing thy song ; 

My acres broad of woods and waving grain 
Are cramped and poor beside thy grand domain ; 

And all my coined gold can never buy 
Thy lease upon the red gold of the sky. 



22 



ItfC* 



To a Mountain 

When God foresaw the littleness of men, 
And all our need of object-lessons, then 

He smote the pulsing, pregnant womb of earth, 
And bade the plain be cleft to give thee birth. 

He caused thy rugged head to rear on high, 
Where clouds and sun make war within the sky ; 

And unto thee the mission grand was given 

To show how lowly earth may reach toward heaven. 



23 



Reading 

Just dropping off the harness from our overwearied 

thought, 
And resting in the beauty that another's brain has 

wrought. 



To My Dog 

Thy speechless tongue, my dog, I envy thee; 
Whatever be thy faults in sight of heaven, 
The stab of venomed words thou hast not given, 

And so thy dumbness seemeth good to me. 



Achievement 

"The low sun makes the color," but the high 
Has climbed the mighty archway of the sky. 



24 



A Warning 

Palest gold of early sunrise lit the face of all the land, 

Touching into life the hill-tops and the shore of spark- 
ling sand, 

Kissing into flame the waters lapping, rippling at 
my feet, 

Tuning all the soul of nature into harmony complete — 

Lighting up a trembling dewdrop on a tinted daisy's 

breast, 
Till to me it seemed a jewel from some wandering 

angel's crest. 
Wonderingly the flower I lifted, by poetic fancy drawn, 
Bent too near, I breathed upon it — and the heavenly 

gem was gone ! 

Oh, my loved one, angel-hearted, is it strange that drop 
of dew 

Was to me a potent warning not to bend too near to 
you? 

One hot breath of passion's impulse, and my love 
would be in vain ; 

You would flee forever from me, in the vanished dew- 
drop's train ! 



25 



The Old Emigrant Road 

Aged and desolate, grizzled and still, 

It creeps in slow curves round the base of the hill ; 

Of its once busy traffic is left little trace, 

Not a hoof-print or wheel-track is fresh on its face. 

Rank brambles encroach on its poor ragged edge, 

And bowlders crash down from the mountainside ledge ; 

The elements join to efface the dim trail, 

The torrents of springtime, the winter's fierce gale ; 

Yet, with pioneer sturdiness, patient and still, 
It lingers and clings round the base of the hill ; 
Outlasting its usefulness, furrowed and gray, 
Gaunt phantom of Yesterday, haunting To-day. 



26 



To Him Who Waits 

All things may come to him who learns to wait, 
But oh, the pity when they come too late ! 



Resignation 

The sad-faced sister of Content is she. 

When thou hast courted sweet Content in vain, 
Hast turned thy back to Joy, thy face to Pain — 

Pale Resignation will join hands with thee. 



Faith 

Faith shuts his eyes and says, "I know ! I know! " 
Because his weakling heart would have it so. 



27 



If I Might Choose 

If I might choose my meeting-time with Death, 
I'd clasp his hand on some sad autumn day, 
And with the year's ripe fruit I'd pass away, 

If I might time my last faint fleeting breath. 

But oh, pale King, thou art no creature's slave ! 
We may choose much in life, but in the end 
Thou makest every mortal will to bend 

And break above an open, waiting grave ! 



28 



SEP 25 1900 



H261 78 529 




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